Still Just as Sweet
by midorimouse7
Summary: AU. Sometimes she wondered when Rachel Berry ceased to exist and when simply Rachel was born. Sometimes she wondered if Rachel Berry really truly existed at all.


Sometimes she wonders where it all went. The dreams. The hope. The passion. Sometimes she wonders if those aspirations were ever really hers to begin with or if they were some clumsy attempt of created a face. A mask. A person. A character. Because that is all what Rachel Berry is. Maybe in the beginning she had substance but now, standing backstage and watching her students perform she can't help but think Rachel Berry never truly existed.

Gone are the days she would wake up at dawn, eager to follow her routine that she was so sure would grant her instant stardom. Gone were the long nights she would sit on her bed as she tried to come up with even more spectacle performances. Rachel Berry was simply gone.

There are days she wonders when this disappearance happened. Was it when she decided love was more important than her dreams of Broadway? Was it when she failed to impress the only judge that mattered? But does it matter? Everything is okay. Life went on.

If people told her she would spend the rest of her days teaching people of Broadway instead of inspiring people on it she would have laughed in their face. For in order for Rachel Berry to disappear there would have to be chaos in the world. The earth would have shaken. Wild beast would have been upon the city. The entire world should have mourned the passing of such a giant.

But the world did not shake. Animals did set loose on the people. And nobody even realized that Rachel Berry was gone.

But was she gone? Did Rachel Berry really leave the world? Or did Rachel Berry simply grow up?

After she failed her audition her world fell apart. She had missed her chance at glory. She had her future taken away from her. She did not know what to do. For what was Rachel Berry if not the future star of Broadway?

The answer was simple; she became a normal teenage girl. She applied to the local college (it was too late to go anywhere else now) and took regular classes. She, like many other newly minted college students, unknowingly drifted away from her friends until it was too late to notice she had replaced them with new ones. She dated other people. She fell in love a few more times. Time went on until Rachel Berry found herself sitting at home at loss as to how life had gotten this way.

No longer was she waking up at dawn to get herself ready for Broadway. She was waking up at dawn to get to work. No longer was she staying up late in preparation for her performances. She was staying up late in order to create new dances for her students. Rachel Berry was simply doing her job.

She wanted that passion back. She wanted to dream. She yearned for hope. But Broadway was no longer the merry forest of dreams she had envisioned. Broadway was a frozen tundra that had become cold and unforgiving. She had lost her chance. She ripped that Golden ticket. There was no time-turner to make it all come back.

But all hope was not lost. Rachel Berry did learn to dream again. She found reasons to hope. She found new passions. Or perhaps this was the lost chance fate had offered her. It was not Broadway. It was not McKinley. It was no audition. It was simply love.

Noah "Puck" Puckerman was not the same person from her teenage years. He too was no longer Puck. Gone was the boy pretending to be a man. Gone were the childish notions. In their place was simply Noah.

After leaving Lima for a few years, Puck decided to stay behind the cool waters of the Atlantic while Noah Puckerman went back in his place. Puck had grown up. No longer was he flying around naively, creating mischief in the night. In his stead a bright and capable man stepped into town.

He charmed his peers with his music playing skills. He amazed his young students. He inspired them to be more. But he did more than that, he brought forth a new Rachel. He filled her with hopes. With dreams. With passion. He filled her with things that blossomed under this new grown up Rachel.

Rachel began to enjoy her new found freedom, no longer stick behind the shadow of Rachel Berry. She learned to love her students, to take joy in their dreams. In their passion. In their hopes. She found new agendas to pursue. A new charter to follow. A new life under simply Rachel.

Sometimes she wondered why Rachel and Noah never worked in high school. But then she remembered there was no Rachel and Noah back then. There was Rachel Berry. And there was Puck. Sometimes she thinks the world just could not handle a Berry and Puck. A diva. A troublemaker. Two masks.

They still had their differences. They still had remnants of their high school personas. They still their buried dreams. But those dreams were just that, buried. Rachel and Noah worked because they worked past their differences. They accepted their personal quirks. They acknowledge that they had different dreams.

Rachel and Noah worked because of their past failings. The world could not handle Rachel Berry and Puck together so the world gave them a second chance.

But were they really Rachel Berry and Puck? Were they really the reincarnation of their past? Or were they simply Rachel and Noah, with a love still just as sweet?


End file.
